Writing Indoctrination

In keeping with my theme of no longer caring if I piss people off, I want to address a particularly scummy attempt at forced shibboleths by a professor from Columbia University named Matthew Salesses.  As this article details, Professor Salesses is an assistant professor of writing at Columbia, and he demanded his students sign a document at the beginning of his class that his students list the race and gender of any character introduced in his creative writing class.  He also had a clause in his document saying that students shouldn't use "banned terms."

I get that educators want to guide students, and especially writing students, into ways to better express themselves, but this is not only not the way to do it, but it will create the opposite of the intended effect.  For starters, as we are always told in writing, "show, don't tell."  My expressly naming a character's race or gender, you take the show part away from the reader.  Having readers discern who the person that stands out among his or her peers is Asian, for example, gives a narrative arc to the story.  A woman fighting for recognition in the legion of knights, doesn't have to so openly scream that she's a woman - the reader will figure that out soon enough by the way her comrades treat her.  Moreover, it appears that Salesses wants his students to go beyond the dimorphous nature of biological reality, which simply narrows an audience already pissy over how much wokism is shoved down their throats.

However, so loudly proclaiming a character's innate characteristics, especially race, deprives the audience of being able to imagine themselves in the role of some of the characters.  On of the most gratifying things about Salvation Day was when not one, not two, but several of my readers, each of differing races, said they imagined themselves in the role of Michael Faulkner(the main character).  Almost none of them exactly pictured the character the way I did when I wrote him, but who cares?  I want readers to enjoy my work, and being able to put yourself in the titular role creates a bond with the story that can be magical.

As to "banned" terms, I think that's a pretty pathetic way to limit language.  A professor should be able to critique a student's work and give them feedback on why they should reword things without telling them outright to not use certain terms.  That shows that things are outside of your comfort level, but writing in general is meant sometimes to discomfort, to make people think.  If a student has to stay within a proscribed box, then that restricts the student's ability to provoke reaction.  At that point, we may as well just read an instruction manual on how to put together an entertainment unit, for that would be about as intellectually stimulating.